Most professional services firms have a rich variety of training and professional development options for their fee earners, but are they and should they be offering the same to their marketers and communications people? Writer and trainer James Lumley finds out what good looks like.
Charlotte Sansom at Dechert LLP is an evangelist for training and continuous professional development (CPD).
“Training, learning and CPD are a passion of mine because I think that they are key to career progression,” she says.
“I’m a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and to maintain my chartered status I have to keep doing CPD. I’m now in my 19th consecutive year of continuous professional development and was one of the first chartered practitioners of PR in the country. So, I do take ongoing learning and development seriously. Every day is a school day!”
Dechert’s offering
Sansom is global law firm Dechert’s Associate Director of PR and Communications for the EMEA region and has spent 18 of the last 24 years working in law firms.
“Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I’ve always worked for firms where there has been a focus on training for marketing professionals, and at Dechert this is particularly strong,” she says.
Dechert has almost a thousand lawyers globally. Its largest presence is in the US, and London is its third largest office. By any standards, it’s a truly global business.
It also, she says, takes training very seriously and invests heavily in it. As well as having a large menu of online training readily available, a programme of in-person courses and a stable of outside trainers, all members of staff have access to a mentoring programme. The firm has a ‘stars’ competition each year that awards a $10,000 prize to anyone in the firm who has shown themselves to be exceptional teachers. And if anyone thinks they need specific training that isn’t already offered, managers can, if they agree it is necessary, make it happen.
And, she says, people use it. All her team and marketing colleagues regularly undertake training – for example DISC personality profiling, maximizing your voice, practical tips for networking, and sales coaching. Importantly, the marketing team has the same training and trainers as the lawyers.
The firm also runs a training session for marketing and business development people on the economics of law firms. That course, she says, is “invaluable”.
“I think at Dechert we punch above our weight, even as a global law firm, for the quality of training that we have. And it really makes a difference.”
An onus on the individual
However, Sansom is clear that, while it is fantastic that Dechert values training, anybody who wants to develop their marketing career should take responsibility for their own training.
“It is important to be allowed to carve out time at work for your development, but I also think that there is an onus on the individual. If you want to learn something, you need to make it happen.”
She’s made a point of participating in committees relating to training and development. As a fellow of the CIPR, she’s been involved in committees and institute business and is on the London committee of the PM Forum. During lockdown she completed Mark Ritson’s MBA in Marketing.
“All of that has been amazing for my learning, my connections and my networking. It has been great to learn from people at different firms.”
Building a department
Anna Gregory, a partner at Farrer & Co in London, has been on a seven-year journey of professional development, from solicitor and head of the firm’s employment team to Director of Knowledge, Learning and Development and then Marketing & Business Development Director. One of the reasons why she made the switch was because she wanted to develop her career along a different path.
“I had been fee earning for about 18 years and frankly, decided that I had done enough of that, so my sideways move to knowledge, learning and development (KL&D) sort of kick-started things.”
Unlike Dechert, Farrers isn’t an international firm, although it has many international clients. Its only location is London, and its 100-plus partners still work in the building the firm took on in 1790.
“When I took on the KL&D role I had this epiphany,” says Gregory. “I realised that professional services firms ultimately sell the knowledge and skills of everyone who works there. That is the business model.”
“It might seem obvious in retrospect, but while fee earning, I’d not really focused on it.”
In common with Dechert, Farrers has always had a healthy budget for training and development, but at that point it wasn’t a key strategic focus.
“The firm has never had a problem funding training, but the KL&D team was probably the least prominent of all the business services teams. When I was offered that role, I thought ‘Hang on a minute, this is really bloody important’.”
She worked hard to raise the profile of the department and provide great KL&D opportunities for everyone in the firm – not just fee earners.
In marketing, almost all members of the team have studied for CIM certificates. Training, however, isn’t formulaic. Individuals at every level of the team are encouraged to access the training that they and the firm think will help them achieve their career objectives.
Apprentices
Gregory has also made good use of apprenticeships.
“When the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced, I looked into it and decided that as we effectively had to start paying an apprenticeship tax, we should get some value from it.”
The Apprenticeship Levy is paid by all businesses that have a wage bill of more than £3 million. They must pay 0.5% of their total wage bill into an apprenticeship fund that they can use to subsidise apprenticeships in the business.
Businesses that don’t use the levy funds within two years lose them and the money is reallocated to fund apprenticeships at smaller businesses.
Gregory took on an apprentice to work with her in KL&D on a General Business Administration Apprenticeship. That was a success.
Gregory then took on a Marketing Apprentice and a Digital Marketing Apprentice. Also, a success.
“We all celebrated when they came top in the class, and now they are doing the CIM,” she says.
The firm has also decided to take on solicitor apprenticeships, a hugely competitive way of getting into the legal profession.
“The solicitor apprentices spend their first two years in business services, moving between teams,” she says. “Six years later, they come out as qualified lawyers who also understand how the business works behind the scenes. It’s things like that which will break down barriers between fee earners and non fee earners.”
Retention and wellbeing
Gregory points out that one of the (many) business cases for giving all employees access to great training is that it motivates and retains them. “KL&D is a great way of keeping people energised, happy and motivated.”
While people will move for more money, well-compensated people change jobs when they feel they aren’t progressing, says Gregory.
“When you invest in people, it is like a partnership,” she says. “You are investing in their personal development and everyone benefits from that. And you get some extra loyalty.”
“In my experience, apprentices are much stickier than people who come in as graduates,” she says. “They’ve become a core part of our team’s culture.”
The recruiter’s point of view
Joanna Milne from Totum specialises in recruiting marketing and business development people for professional services firms.
She agrees that training is an important tool for retention. “It makes people feel valued,” she says
Even so, she points out that firms rarely if ever stipulate that candidates need a marketing qualification. Even so, qualifications and evidence of training enhance a CV.
“People who have done courses of their own volition are impressive to employers. It shows that they want to progress in their careers,” she says. “And for more senior people, taking personal time to do a Mini MBA, for example, also shows that they are hardworking and invested in progressing. And that might be even more important than the skills themselves.”
Dechert’s Sansom is convinced that marketing and BD managers who are enthusiastic about training and developing their teams make better hires and have better teams.
“I’ve never recruited anyone who wasn’t keen on receiving training,” she says. “As a firm, we want to grow and we want to develop, so we want to tell people that there are great opportunities to be had here.”
The simple result is that she recruits people who are more likely to excel.
James Lumley, freelance journalist, corporate writer, trainer and coach. www.byline.london
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